Dozens of people have been injured in a stampede at India’s Maha Kumbh festival as tens of thousands of people turned out for the religious gathering to offer their prayers by the riverbanks of the northern city of Prayagraj, authorities said on Wednesday.
“Some people have got injured and have been hospitalized after a barrier broke at the Sangam. We are yet to have the exact count of those injured,” news agency Press Trust of India (PTI) quoted an official on duty, Akanksha Rana, as saying.
Reports about people killed in crowd surge
News agency AFP reported that 15 people were dead after being crushed by a crowd surge and officials have neither confirmed nor denied the figure so far. Reuters reported that at least seven people have died.
Distraught family members waited outside the make-shift hospitals in the tent city created for the Maha Kumbh Mela. Meanhwile, videos and photographs showed belongings strewn across the ground where the stampede occured.
The Kumbh Mela is the biggest gathering of humanity in the world — where families, devotees and elderly pilgrims gather at the meeting point of rivers Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati, once every 12 years.
This year’s festival — which has a prefix ‘maha’ meaning ‘great’ — is thought to be one of particular signifcance with astrologers saying that such an alignment of stars has’t occured in 144 years.
Organizers expect over 400 million people, more than the population of the US, to descend on Prayagraj city between January 13 and February 26.
Auspicious day of festival sees heavy influx of devotees
While this year’s festival is celebrated over a span of 45 days, Wednesday marks the occasion of ‘Mauni Amavasya’ which is the last new moon night before the festival of Mahashivratri.
Authorities expected Wednesday to be the most crowded day of the festival as devotees believe a dip in the holy rivers on this day is a unique opportunity to be blessed by ancestors.
The Uttar Pradesh state government expected around 100 million devotees to visit the site, officials had said in a press briefing earlier in January.
Videos on social media showed a sea of people gathered in the early hours of Wednesday, waiting for their turn to bathe in riverwaters.
Meanwhile, local media outlets reported that bathing in the waters was temporarily suspended because of the incident.
mk/rm (AP, Reuters)
